The invention relates to a sewing installation for fabric articles, for instance bedclothes of all sorts, including fitted sheets, sponge fabric articles, wool blankets and so forth, which are to be provided with a seam and/or rubber or elastic tapes, binding or border strips, trimming, braid or the like, with a first material handling device for the fabric articles cut to length from a stock, which transfers these fabric articles to a second material handling device including endless conveyor belts, which can be raised by a lifting device for the introduction of the fabric articles over a part of their length and can be lowered in order to pick up and further convey 15 the fabric articles, to at least one sewing machine, and the lifting device has lifting elements which engage from below in turn on the bottom drum of the conveyor belts.
In a known sewing machine of this type, the second material handling device has two endless conveyor belts at some spacing from each other and side by side, between which can be introduced the first material handling device, in order to transfer the fabric articles to the second material handling device. During the introduction phase of the fabric articles by the first material handling device to the second material handling device, the second material handling device is raised by a lifting device, and simultaneously the power for the second material handling device and also the sewing machine is disconnected, and indeed remains disconnected until the conveyor belts of the second material handling device are once again lowered, in order to pick up the subsequent fabric article which is being fed in and to transport it further to the sewing machines. In this known installation a sewing machine is arranged at each longitudinal side of the second material handling device, in order to process the fabric article by working on two opposite edges. Because of the aforementioned intermittent method of processing, the fabric article can be processed only in steps in the second material handling device together with the sewing machines, which correspondingly reduces the sewing rate, and rate of production of these known sewing machines. Also, because of the intermittent processing of the of the sewing machines, a number of flaws occur, including thread breakages. Another drawback of this known sewing machine resides in that the lifting elements engaging in turn from below on the bottom drum of the two conveyor belts are fixed rigidly on the machine frame and therefore extend over the entire width of the fabric articles. If these are changed, the position of the lifting elements is then reversed on the machine frame, which is complicated, bothersome, and time-consuming.